NEWS Kaduna pil­grims al­lege di­ver­sion of Zamzam wa­ter

Protest by Kaduna State pil­grims that re­turned from Saudi Ara­bia yesterday over al­leged di­ver­sion of Zamzam wa­ter nearly es­ca­lated but for the quick in­ter­ven­tion of Cus­toms of­fi­cials.

Daily Trust gath­ered that the plane that re­turned the pil­grims to Kaduna landed with about 620 (5)-litre gal­lons of Zamzam wa­ter, but a se­nior of­fi­cial of the Hajj com­mis­sion al­legedly at­tempted to di­vert 500 gal­lons of the wa­ter.

One of the pil­grims from Sabon Gari Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Area, Bar­ris­ter Muham­mad Saminu Abubakar, said trou­ble be­gan when the ve­hi­cle car­ry­ing the 500 gal­lons at­tempted to leave the camp.

“About 300 of us re­turned at about 3am to­day (yesterday). Based on the ar­range­ment, no pil­grim was al­lowed to carry Zamzam into the

plane, but on ar­rival each of us would be given a five-litre gallon of the holy wa­ter. Our plane landed with 620 gal­lons, but a se­nior of­fi­cial of the Hajj com­mis­sion or­dered his men on ground to di­vert 500 gal­lons to his house. When the pil­grims got wind of that, they started protest­ing. They also stopped the van car­ry­ing the 500 gal­lons”, Bar­ris­ter Abubakar said.

He added: “Ev­ery­one here is an­noyed, be­cause this is re­li­gious mat­ter, yet some cor­rupt of­fi­cials are at­tempt­ing to cheat. They did the same to our col­leagues that re­turned be­fore us. I think it is time the Kaduna State and fed­eral gov­ern­ment look into the ac­tiv­i­ties of Hajj, be­cause there are many is­sues that need to be ad­dressed”

The As­sis­tant Comptroller of Cus­toms in charge of Kaduna, Musa D, said no­body has right to move the Zamzam wa­ter out of the camp since it was meant for the pil­grims.

Our cor­re­spon­dent re­ports that the comptroller then su­per­vised of­fload­ing of the wa­ter for dis­tri­bu­tion.

Cus­toms of­fi­cer in-charge of the camp, ASP II Abubakar Zakari, on his part said, “I am not per­mit­ted to talk to the press, but as you can see, our in­ter­ven­tion has saved the sit­u­a­tion and the dis­tri­bu­tion is go­ing on smoothly.”